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As to family tree research, i have done that through Ancestry UK and Find My Past. I think the ancestry sub is about £20 a month, and the other one I think is about £12 although i paid a year in advance last time.
It is something I get into every now and then for a few weeks over the years. It's easy enough to cancel the subs when you are not going to be doing it for a while. I have used BMD a bit which is free but generally I've not really explored the free options as I don't think they were there when I started doing it. If it could be done efficiently for free though I don't see how these firms could stay in business. As people have said it is crucial to have some info from parents about maiden names of grt grandparents etc as you can't really get started without that. Once you know that info you can find the people in the 1901 or 1911 census and take it from there. Then you will find a further generation back but you really need order birth/marriage certificates of individuals to make progress beyond the census info. When ordering certificates you need to get them direct from the GRO which i think is about £9 each. There is a link on Ancestry to order them but they charge about £25 ! I think I have traced about 75% of my ancestors that were living since 1830 and maybe 30% that were around in 1790s. There was one branch that someone else had traced back to 1580 or so. Once you have exhausted the census and certificate data it is on to parish records. These are much more available on ancestry and FMP than they used to be, but still quite patchy. Irish records are more available than before also, though very hit and miss, and always hard to know that the names - which can be spelled 50 different ways - are the people you are looking for. |
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Been doing it on and off for a couple of years. Ancestry.com. I find I need massive chunks of time to get anywhere. I am 50% Irish and a lot of records were lost when the
Public Records office was burnt down, so I am having to work backwards and then forwards from earlier records. Probably wouldn't take long if you just want to track direct i.e. mother father, mother father, but if you wan to include other members of the families, which often contain interesting stories, the scope of the project can become massive. I got given a very old, much copied and sellotape, hand-drawn family tree by my late Auntie which went back to around 1600 which started me off. Via Ancestry, I made contact with a distant relative in Canada. He was absolutely thrilled when I sent him the hand-drawn tree as he was able to get a much better understanding of his heritage. He and his extended family have made two trips to the UK and Ireland to pursue his research. This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't given him the info I had. |
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There is of course the elephant in the room - the illegitimate child, which would unknowingly throw a complete spanner in the works. And of course the futher you go back the more likely meaning maybe not tracing so far back is a good idea.
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Well yes, that's the funny thing about people "tracing their history" and saying "I'm King Thorin's descendent, from 14 generations ago". That is of course ruling out the inevitable illegitimate children or even adopted cases. And switched babies in 14th century maternity wards, when the NHS was notoriously sloppy. You don't have to watch many episodes of "who do you think you are" to see you don't have to go far back to see scandals and wierd turns, and that's the relatively well documented cases.
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Not sure how to break this news to the person who started the largest known family tree in history - containing 13 million people.
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Just a last point or question
What exactly is a direct descendant? which may sound like a daft question but still. Is that your mum's mum mums mum mum etc and your dad's dad dad dad dad dad dad dad etc so on the direct female / male line... or or is it your mums dad dad mums dad mumd dad or you dads dad dad mums dad mums mums dad? etc I have googled this but no clear answer. |
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direct descendant is blood lineage, like not lnvlving step kids who entered family by marriage , afaik
your mums mums mums mum is a direct antecedant |
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I ended up in kerry
Meeting a guy who looked like me Turned out my grandad had been A naughty boy out of wedlock On a trip back from u k Kept it quiet by giving The mistress twenty plus acres ...... IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME |